


pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone

by MiniNephthys



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 14:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6427597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniNephthys/pseuds/MiniNephthys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even if Gaster goes over every abstract in the entire underground, not a single one of them will show why Asgore’s presence makes his soul warmer when no other monster’s does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone

Biology has never been Gaster’s strong suit.

That’s not to say he hasn’t studied it. Far from it: he’s poured over textbooks written by humans and monsters alike and learned the secrets of life. He can speak at length about the caridoid escape reaction, better known as lobstering or tail-flipping, which allows a crustacean to remove themselves from a situation without wasting even the time it would take to think about it.

Or, as Sans more eloquently puts it, “how they get the heck out of dodge”.

And therein lies one of Gaster’s problems with biology. He’s a man of science, and everything should be explainable by a reaction, a chemical property, something quantifiable. That’s not to say that nothing surprises a physicist - when it does, it’s cause for great excitement, because it means that one of his assumptions is wrong and he has the chance to learn more about the world.

But biology will never explain why Sans’ phrasing makes him smile while his own explanation is dull. No matter how hard he searches through evolutionary chains and ecological charts, he’ll never find the definition of a pun, nor why that kind of joke makes Papyrus groan louder than any other. That’s the realm of psychology, which isn’t even a real science.

Even if he goes over every abstract in the entire underground, not a single one of them will show why Asgore’s presence makes his soul warmer when no other monster’s does.

So Gaster considers biology something of a disappointment. Oh, it certainly explains a great deal about the world around them, and he has as much respect for biologists as he does for any other kind of (real) scientist. But the answers he’d personally like to find in biology simply aren’t there.

Gaster sticks to physics. Even when he’s wrong in physics, no feelings are hurt: the worst that can happen is a small explosion in the lab, and that’s only happened a few times.

If he’s wrong with people - if he’s wrong with Asgore, the last person he’d ever want to harm, and says something callous when he should have been sympathetic or says something pitying when he should have kept his mouth shut - he can leave wounds that are as real as any injuries on a person’s soul.

Maybe it’s not biology that’s the problem. Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t understand why people do anything half as well as he understands why lightbulbs work and why a monster’s magic takes the form it does. That’s more likely.

Especially when it comes to his own feelings, he’s groping in the dark for something solid, something that makes sense to him, and coming up empty. He can theorize all he wants, but nothing truly explains the happiness Asgore brings to him. And, as a scientist, the last thing he wants to do is surrender and declare that it will be a mystery forever.

Even if it takes a hundred more years, he’ll keep trying to understand.


End file.
